Value of the Dolls

The best DVDs of 2009.

It's official: Home video consumers are looking for "value added"
this holiday season. So we beat the bushes and found ten 2009 DVD
and/or Blu-Ray releases, in a wide array of genres, that bring a little
something extra to the party. Our list isn't merely a home video rehash
of the best theatrically released movies of the year. We're going for a
true value-added experience, a video you can curl up and spend serious
time with — in some cases all day and night.

The Exiles $24.99

Milestone Film & Video went whole hog with Kent Mackenzie's
brilliant character study/urban-nostalgia-mobile The Exiles, the
ultra-realistic story of a group of young Native Americans living in
Los Angeles' old Bunker Hill neighborhood, circa 1961. Bonus add-ons
include period footage of the now-vanished nabe, commentary track,
audio features, downloadable DVD-ROM archives on Mackenzie, and
White Fawn's Devotion, the first Native American film.
(Oscilloscope/Milestone Cinematheque)

Notorious $19.99

Go to school on Biggie Smalls. The surprisingly conventional showbiz
bio of the late Brooklyn hip-hop star (well played by Jamal Woolard) is
best viewed on Fox's deluxe three-disc edition, crammed with schwag in
DTS HD Master Audio. So you're more of a folkie than a rapper? Try
Always Been a Rambler, an excellent introduction to the
traditional American music of the New Lost City Ramblers, from El
Cerrito's Arhoolie Foundation. Extras: ten rare performances.
(Twentieth Century Fox)

Mad Men: Season 2$18.99

Skinny ties. Bouffant hair-dos. Cocktails and smokes in the office.
Perry Como. Casual sexism. Lies. Is Mad Men a sardonic portrait
of mid-20th-century American power and arrogance at its high-water
mark, or just a glorified soap opera? Make up your own mind with the
Season 2 boxed set from the hit TV series: Intriguing peripherals on
feminism, the White House, etc. Coming soon: Season 3. (Lions Gate)

Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection$24.99

In 1963, after leaving the downsized Warner Bros. animation
department, toon genius Chuck Jones landed at MGM and took over the
"Tom and Jerry" franchise. Piece of cake. Frustrated feline Tom in
perpetual pursuit of adorably sadistic mouse Jerry was another
"Roadrunner and Coyote" proposition. If anything, Jones' playful touch
lightens up the grand-guignol violence of their previous adventures,
but they're still relatively dialogue-free. Warner Home Video's package
includes 34 cartoons ("The Brothers Carry-Mouse-Off," "Advance and Be
Mechanized," etc.) plus two informative Jones-centric docs. (Warner
Home Video)

The Samuel Fuller Film Collection$71.99

A cinema fistful of action. This welcome retrospective of the
cigar-chomping auteur not only taps two of Fuller's directorial efforts
for Columbia, The Crimson Kimono and Underworld U.S.A.,
but five earlier films written by Fuller, including the Phil
Karlson-helmed Scandal Sheet and Shockproof, directed by
Douglas Sirk. Tim Robbins, Curtis Hanson, and Martin Scorsese help sort
out the seven-disc set. Also from Sony: The Films of Michael
Powell, a delicious two-fer of British director Powell's WWII
fantasy A Matter of Life and Death (with David Niven) and the
Australian artist-and-model romance Age of Consent, starring
James Mason and the voluptuous young Helen Mirren. Martin Scorsese
introduces both films. (Sony Pictures)

The William Castle Film Collection $60.49

Gimmick king Castle's most famous horror film, The House on
Haunted Hill, isn't in this eight-title, five-disc set from Sony,
but his Columbia hits are all here, notably The Tingler ("Scream
for your life!"), Castle's odd Hitchcock homage Homicidal, and
Strait-Jacket, starring Joan Crawford as an axe-murdering maniac
("She's the ultimate gimmick," gushes filmmaker John Waters on the
companion documentary). Endless special features: Crawford's "axe
test," alternate endings, and vintage Castle-isms like the "Punishment
Poll" from Mr. Sardonicus. (Sony Pictures)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine $19.99

The scuffle between two long-lost, long-clawed, superhero brothers
(noble Hugh Jackman and renegade Liev Schreiber) dominates this latest
in the X-Men series. Purchasers of the Fox two-disc edition get
a slew of extras plus a digital copy of the flick; single-disc steerage
passengers have to be content with a making-of and an anti-smoking PSA.
I'm not kidding. Graphic novel fiends might be better off with
Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut from Warner. The four-disc Blu-Ray
set combines the theatrical cut with "Tales of the Black Freighter,"
offers a 325-minute "Complete Motion Comics" show, and throws in seven
featurettes in addition to a separate theatrical version of the movie.
Whew. (Twentieth Century Fox)

Coraline: Two-Disc Collector's Edition$24.99

One of 2009's best movies, Henry Selick's animated tale of a lonely
teenage girl finding herself gets the royal treatment from Universal.
Both the DVD and Blu-Ray Collector's Editions feature 2-D and 3-D
versions, a digital copy of the film, a Selick commentary track, two
making-ofs, and four pairs of 3-D specs. Follow the bouncing mice.
(Universal Studios)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs $19.99

The most momentous film on this list. Disney's first-rate re-release
of its beloved animated fairytale is a diamond mine full of special
treats — video games, Walt's home movies, making-ofs,
commentaries, HD 7.1 sound — but most of the extras are only
available on the Blu-Ray discs, not the DVD. They're trying to sell us
hardware. Same deal with two other recommended family-style packages
from Disney/Pixar: Up and Monsters Inc. (Walt Disney
Studios Home Entertainment)

Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics, Vol. I$44.99

Almost as entertaining as the five bullet-hard noirs in this set is
the salty commentary track for Don Siegel's The Lineup, by the
East Bay's Nabob of Noir, Eddie Muller, and nutso crime novelist James
Ellroy. Good to see Sony weigh into the noir game with classics like
Edward Dmytryk's The Sniper and Fritz Lang's The Big
Heat. Resident experts include directors Michael Mann, Christopher
Nolan, and the ubiquitous Scorsese. (Sony Pictures)

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